Mark Byron

Sending a Video

We're looking at the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall today. What's wrong with the following passage?

German Chancellor Angela Merkel was joined at the Brandenburg Gate by Russia's Dmitry Medvedev, France's Nicolas Sarkozy and UK PM Gordon Brown.

In a special video address, US President Barack Obama said Berliners had rebuked tyranny on 9 November 1989.

Is Air Force One in the shop? Did the president get so tied up in watching the health care debate that he forgot to RSVP?

I'm reminded of the pro-lifer's critique that conservative presidents would merely sent a taped message to their January marches on Roe's anniversary but wouldn't show up in person; their support was more talk than action.

The Dirty Dozen

That's the difference between the G8 and the G20, which is set to supplant the smaller grouping as the main annual powwow of world economic powers.

Back in the 80s, it was the G7, which had the US, Canada, Japan, Britain, France, Germany and Italy. An earlier version was the G5 which lopped off Canad and Italy. Then, post-Cold-War, Russia was added, even though it wasn't nearly the economic powerhouse that the G7 economies were; a lot of big security questions were being discussed and the powers that be wanted them inside the room rather than outside.

The G20 includes the other three of what international economists call the BRIC countries besides Russia: Brazil, India and China, three key developing countries that have increasing clout in international trade and finance.

In addition, the G20 gives the EU a seat as well as the ones going to the four G7 Europeans as well as Argentina, Australia, Indonesia, Mexico, South Africa, South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

Here's a quick rundown of the 12 newbies plus Russia as far as where their political systems are at.

Argentina	Young Democracy
Australia	Functional Democracy
Brazil	Functional Democracy
China	Autocracy
EU	Young Democracy
India	Functional Democracy
Indonesia	Young Democracy
Mexico	Young Democracy
Russia	Autocracy
Saudi Arabia	Autocracy
South Africa	Young Democracy
South Korea	Functional Democracy
Turkey	Young Democracy

I'm not sure there is a definition to be had, but Argentina, Indonesia, Mexico, Turkey and South Africa are less than two decades into a fully democratic electoral system and are still working out the kinks of the system, as is the EU. Russia is nominally a democracy, but the Putin clique run things just about as tightly as the Chinese Communist Party and the house of Saud.

The rule of law is still a work in progress in many of those young democracies and very stochastic in the autocracies. That's going to make the G20 somewhat problematic, as there is a lot of authoritarian tendencies in a majority of the countries.

For instance, many countries have a history of government-run banks, so straight-jacket regulations of banks isn't that much of a leap from their recent pasts or present. Other countries have a small number of large banks that are well connected with governments and act more as financial utilities than commercial, competitive outfits . That tendency towards centralization and regulation might not bode well for the future.

However, the world economy is bigger than the old G7. It's time to bring the teenagers up to the adult table. Just be careful of what their values are.

Golden Rules

It's UN General Assembly week, and as usual, we have a truckload of foreign leaders coming to have their 15 minutes in the limelight, including the usual rogue's gallery of malcontents and bad actors. Today, Caesar Chavez was acting somewhat polite, but only somewhat. However, he was breathing the vapors of the left in accusing the US military of arranging the "coup" in Honduras.

Their new president, Roberto Micheletti, was one of the few foreign leaders not welcome; the US wouldn't give him a visa. Ousted president Jose Manuel Zelaya, a Chavezesque figure, wanted to get rid of the term limits he was under but their constitution has that as an unamendable part; discussing amending it is an impeachable offense per the Constitution, and their Supreme Court did just that.

Given that Micheletti is more moderate than Zelaya, the left is up in arms, and the world diplomatic community is treating it as a coup; dumping Zelaya out of the country didn't help matters, but this is more like (forced analogy alert) the world trying to get Nixon back in power after Watergate than what normally passes for a coup in the developing world.

Other than that, everyone else is welcome to say their piece this week. That is one of the good points of the UN, the less-than-straight-shooting nature of some of the apparat notwithstanding; as Churchill put it, jaw-jaw is better than war-war. The bozos of the world community get to play the clown; it's better to let them talk and be seen for who they are than to give them some martyr status by shutting them out.

Do under others as you would have then do unto you. That applies to Chavez and Ahmadinejad as well as the folks we like.

Pay Me Now or (Maybe) Pay Me Later

Here's an interesting BBC piece on various scientific fixes to excessive CO₂ and climate change. Instead of working to control CO₂ , we could either extract it from the athmosphere or do other things to mitigage global warming, like add extra salt water to the clouds to make them more reflective.

Here's the conversation-starting quote from chair of the study cited in the article, Dr. John Shepherd-

He said: "It is an unpalatable truth that unless we can succeed in greatly reducing CO2 emissions, we are headed for a very uncomfortable and challenging climate future.

"Geo-engineering and its consequences are the price we may have to pay for failure to act on climate change."

I added some italics. Such terraforming of Terra may be needed. Then again, it may not.

Putting a bib on a messy kid is prudent, but if bibs cost $1000 each, I'll be happy to clean up after the kid, especially if there's a high likelihood that he won't make that much of a mess.

If we're going to spend multiple billions of dollars to speed up the process of weaning us from fossil fuels (it will happen eventually anyway as things run out) and we're not really sure it will make a dent, why not save the money to take care of other pressing needs and use the terraforming stuff if we need to later on?

A Lack of History

Here's an interesting story on the Indian environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, basically giving the middle-digit-salute to the global-warming crowd. Climate-change mavens will point to melting glaciers that feed India's main rivers, but Ramesh has another view-

“We have to get out of the preconceived notion, which is based on western media, and invest our scientific research and other capacities to study Himalayan atmosphere,” he said.

“Science has its limitation. You cannot substitute the knowledge that has been gained by the people living in cold deserts through everyday experience.”

Mr Ramesh was also clear that India would not take on targets to cut its emissions, even though developed countries are asking only for curbs in the growth of emissions, rather than absolute cuts.

...

Mr Ramesh said the rate of retreat of glaciers in the Himalayas varied from a “couple of centimetres a year to a couple of metres”, but that this was a natural process that had taken place occurred over the centuries. Some were, in fact, growing, he said.

The glaciers – estimated by India’s space agency to number about 15,000 – had also been affected by debris and the large number of tourists, he said.

Climate change hawks point to warming tempertures and melting glaciers as evidence for the need to do something now. However, glaciers have a history of coming and going, something that Himalayan culture understands but modern scietific culture that has locked onto the global-warming meme doesn't.

A colder-than-normal summer in the northern US doesn't disprove global warming; the warming is rather small and if weather patterns can go plus-or-minus 10 degrees within normal times, if things warm up a degree, we than have +11 to -9 from our old normal as our range.

Likewise, if we have a +7 somewhere, it doesn't show global warming, or a -7 in glacier size.

Em-PHA-sys on different Sy-LA-buls

This piece on Sec. of State Clinton's (that still sounds like something out of a sci-fi near future piece circa 2000) India sojourn shows the folly of tackling climate change alone.

India won’t bend to demands from the Obama administration or threats from the U.S. Congress to adopt legally binding caps on its carbon emissions, the country’s environment minister told visiting U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday.

“There is simply no case for the pressure” the U.S. is exerting, considering India produces among the lowest per capita emissions in the world, Minister Jairam Ramesh told Clinton during an unexpected discussion of climate negotiations during an event intended to showcase U.S.-Indian cooperation on clean energy at a “green” office building outside New Delhi.

The buzz word among the properly-caring folks in the global North is "Sustainable Development." However, when you're in the North, the emphasis is on Sustainable, that you not endanger either the micro-environments of the South or the world environment with excessive use of carbon-based fuels.

In the South, the empahsis is on Development, getting better off. How they do that is of secondary concern; they may say the right things to visiting ecodiplomats, but they'll do enough of the green stuff to make sure they bring in that other kind of green, the kind that comes off printing presses in ones, fives and twenties.

We're most likely to be better off to not go off on a climate-change kick and just slowly and naturally wean ourselves off of fossil fuels and spend the money we'd be spending on cutting CO2 emissions on fighting poverty and disease and/or mitigating any problems caused by climate change. For the largest part of the problem (if it is a problem at all, but let's concede the problem for the moment) of CO2 will be areas like India and China growing and starting to have more American-style lifestyles. That will mean more cars, more air conditioning, more electricity and most likely more than a bit more carbon going up in smoke.

Sustainable Development in a stricter northern form means slower growth both for northerners and southerners. When you're fairly well off, slow growth isn't all that bad, but if you're living in a shantytown on the edge of a developing country's capital, slow growth means staying in that shack rather than advancing and having a house or an apartment. Thus, "Third World" (as we used to call it) leaders will err on the side of development and growth rather than greenness, thus kicking extra stuff into the air for the whole world to deal with.

That means that we're either going to really clamp down in the North or just go with the flow and accept that we'll have a bit more CO2 in the air and may have a bit extra warmth in the system. Emphasis on may; we only saw about a 1-degree increase as the story goes in the 1900s, and should be able to handle any minor changes that may occur as things increase.

Extra CO2 may be like the Epscopalians going further left; there may not be much we can do with it. The problem with the latter is that it is far more corrosive and may well effect more people's lives than some extra plant growth agent in the air.

 

Trained SEALs

Well trained at that. It seems more like a denouement of a JAG episode than real life, but the Navy freed the captive captain of the Maersk Alabama, Richard Phillips. They had the lifeboat that had the captain and four pirates within 30 yards, and when the pirates were looking like they were about to us an AK-47 on Phillips, SEAL snipers got off three head shots and three kills on the pirates.  The fourth pirate became compliant and will get tried somewhere, while Phillips is in Navy hands and safe and sound.

SEALs are the Navy's commando bad-asses (excuse the French, but nothing else quite fits) and they earned their keep today-here's Central Command's Admiral Gortney's take

“We pay a lot for their training,” Gortney said of the snipers. “We got a good return on their investment tonight.”

These are trained SEALs that don't go HARP, HARP, HARP; a good Boo-Yah is what we get to hear today; I may be off on military branch jingo, but they deserve some hearty hooray. It isn't the kind of news you want to see on Easter, but it is good news.

Make the Prints a Bit Less Gaudy

"Fidel Castro asks US lawmakers how to improve ties." However, I'm not sure if a group of congressmen is the best test market; they often have funky tastes in neckware.

You in the back right.... "Dye"... if it covered up that ut-bugly parrot, that might work... Oh, "Die". That wasn't nice. It would improve relations, but it still isn't nice.

March MADness

I was fortunate as a MSU alum to having to be busy with professorial duties last night and didn't get to see North Carolina's dismantling of the Spartans in the finals. By the time I got home about 10PM, UNC was already up 20 and things were all but over for MSU.

However, it's another dismantling that is on my mind, it's President Obama's U2 remix of How to Dismantle an Atomic Arsenal.

Mr. Obama specifically outlined U.S. plans to support treaties banning the production of weapons-grade materials, as well as the testing of atomic weapons, efforts backed by President Bill Clinton but largely ignored by Mr. Bush.

Speaking at Prague's Castle Square, Mr. Obama told the audience his administration was committed "to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons."

"We have to insist: 'Yes, we can,'" he said, reprising a campaign theme recognizable to a crowd a continent away from his election victory.

Is that a goal that we should shoot for? If I can borrow from NRA rhetoric, if nukes are outlawed, only outlaws will have nukes.

Let's play Obama's dream out, and all the major and minor nuclear players sign off to destroy all their nukes by say 2030; contrary to conservative fears, the rogue states honestly play along and allow all their nukes to be destroyed.

Two problems with that scenario.

(1) Did they get all the nukes? It is hard to prove a negative, and a secretive state might have a few contraband nukes kicking around in a very secure and very undisclosed location. Worse yet, the contraband might be in non-governmental hands, ready to be used or sold to the highest bidder who's willing to go outlaw.

(2) Once the nukes are gone, the first country or interested party to get back in the nuclear game is king. A 2050 Dr. Evil or Osama 3.0 might have the money, the security and the nuclear engineering savvy to have their own nuke factory. Couple that with some homemade inexpensive rocketry (at least much more affordable than today) that might be off the shelf in 40 years, and we're one mad scientist (or madman with a scientist on his payroll) from some serious terrorism.

If that madman is a country, they can cow whole countries into submission who have no good response to a nuclear attack. Even a well-armed US might be hard-pressed to take on a foe that might have stashes of well-hidden baby-ICBMs in unfriendly territory. Once the madman shows that they are willing to use their nukes, they rule all but the most gutsy countries.

The old Cold War meme of Mutual Assured Destruction or MAD still has some impact on national actors. If you parking lot us, we'll parking lot you; as Joshua in War Games put it, "the only winning move is not to play."

MAD doesn't deter folks who don't mind dying or terrorists who might count on something other than a nuclear reply from a one-off nuke attack. However, a small tactical nuke might be one way to take out a Dr. Evil base if he's nuke-packin' and well fortified.

I don't see the US replying in kind to a terrorist nuke with one of their own; we have enough conventional weapons to rain hellfire down upon any party deemed responsible without going nuclear ourselves, baring the nuclear bunker-buster scenario above.

However, there are enough bad actors in the world and would be tyrants who would like to rule the world with a batch of nuclear ICBMs. Being able to tell such a would be emperor to think again might well be worth passing on Obama's dream.

"Center-Right" Sighting

Here's an interesting sentence from a piece on former Israeli president Moshe Katsav going up on charges of rape and sexual assault; he makes Bill Clinton sound like a choir boy.

Katsav, of the center-right Likud Party, was president from 2000 to 2007

It is rare for any conservative party to get a "center-right" label from the media. A quick Google has "center right Likud" with 2980 references and "right-wing Likud" with 77,100. Compare that with "'center left Labor' Israel" and you get 18800 hits; I had to add the Israel modifier, for I'd get references for various Labor parties elsewhere.

However, when you consider that Likud is now the political center, where there is no workable coalition to the left of them, that they are now center-right.

Have they changed? I don't think so. However, the Israeli electorate has, puttling Likud towards the center of Israeli thought. The grinding sound you hear are the foreign diplomats wearing down their teeth.

Aggressive Negotiations

Somewhat good news out of Georgia; the Russians have stopped shooting and have signed off onto terms of a peace plan. WWIII has been put off, and both parties have signed off on "international talks about [the] future status of South Ossetia and Abkhazia."

That's a two-edged sword for the Russians. Agreeing to those talks is in Russia's advantage, since they'd prefer either to annex both territories or to see them independent rather than as part of an unfriendly Georgia. However, it does create the precedent of having international talks on breakaway regions, something that could come back to bite them in places like Chechnya.

Essentially, we're back to the status-quo-ante, with the exception that the Georgian military has taken it in the neck and the current Georgian government has some egg on its face for provoking such a violent response from Russia. It will be interesting to see whether Georgian voters will be cowed into voting for a more pro-Russian government or be made more nationalistic and anti-Russian.

The Russians probably figured that the world could accept the fait accompli of their declawing of the Georgian military and ouster from South Ossetia, but not a wholesale takeover of Georgia. Anything more risked WWIII, but the Russians got most of what they wanted.

Future lesson for the west. If we want to avoid such clashes in the future, bring the countries we want to protect into NATO; if Russia had to tangle with the whole West, they'd likely pass on such an invasion.

Georgia on My Mind

Things are not pretty in Georgia, as the Russian army has gone beyond the Osettian areas they're nominally protecting and gone into unhyphenated Georgian territory-

A CNN crew in Gori saw Georgian forces piling into trucks and leaving the city at high speed.

CNN saw thousands of troops driving out of the city, as well as thousands of civilians traveling by convoy from Gori toward Tbilisi.

Gori lies along Georgia's main east-west highway, and is an important site for Georgia's communication systems.

Russian troops were also in Senaki, in western Georgia, having advanced from Abkhazia, Russian and Georgian officials said.

We're close to seeing the Russians taking over Georgia. The Georgians are outgunned if the Russians want to resort to all-out war, and there is nothing the UN can do about it if they wanted to, since the Russians can veto anything.

Any reply to help the Georgians would be a US-NATO endeavor. Does the US have the stomach to risk a possible WWIII to go toe-to-toe with the Russians for the first time?

I'm a bit scared. We can't let this invasion stand if we want to let free states thrive from oppression, but reversing that against a nuclear power is rather dicey. The American public is paying more attention to Michael Phelps and the rest of the US swim team (yesterday's 4X100 freestyle relay was one for the ages, watch it here if you haven't caught it yet), but far bigger fish are frying in the Caucuses.

Comparisons to the Sudetenland are being made in Europe, and it isn't that far fetched; Russia is using the Russians in many of the old USSR republics as an excuse to hegomondize there, and they've gone beyond hegemon to outright imperial in Georgia. Similar minorities exist in a number of number of other now-independent countries that could be brought back under Russian rule if the US stands by.

Are we willing to risk WWIII for this? I think we should, for if we don't, the Russians will slowly reclaim their empire one country at a time. Without opposition, the toughest kid on the block will pick off their neighbors.

To top if off, the bully is packing nukes. They won't likely use them on the Georgians, but they might against the US if it intervenes.

No Joking Matter

I was using the headlines of last night as joke fodder in the South Ossetia situation. Now, it's deadly serious; it looks like the Russians are coming to the aid of the Ossetians. Russian TV has the tanks rolling south and the Georgians are claiming to have shot down two Russian fighters who attacked parts of Georgia.

If we're unlucky, this could escalate into WWIII. The Russians would like to annex South Ossetia, or at least have a friendly independent S.O. Unfortunately, the rest of the world might not agree and might back up Georgia. WWI started with an assassination, so stranger things have happened.

Surrender, or We'll Send Uga VII in After You

"Georgia Surrounds Rebel Capital." Funny, I didn't think that they had Ole Miss on the schedule this year.

Seriously, it's the northern Georgian (the former USSR republic) area of South Ossetia that has set up their own government; the area has a lot of ethnic Russians and Da Bear doesn't like the Georgian government flexing its muscles.

What's happening in Tskhinvali reminds me of what the Russians were doing to the Chechen capital of Grozny during that civil war. Not that bad yet, but when the Red Cross is asking for a humanitarian corridor, things aren't looking good.

War is not the Answer: Getting the Bad Guys to Behave is.

I've seen quite a few "War is not the Answer" bumper stickers around Lexington these days; yes, we're in a college town, and even with their crazed Big Blue sport fandom and being in a Southern town, the UK folks do drift a tad left, like just about any non-church-school academics do.

Our local lefties are right on this one. War isn't the answer. If wars go on and on without a conclusion (WWI, for example), they serve little purpose other than making funeral homes and arms merchants rich.

Getting the bad guys to behave is the answer. If responding with military force doesn't move the bad guys towards civilized behavior, then military force isn't the answer.

The bumpers stickers bring out a reflexive response to a boomer of a certain age, who'll fill in the lyrics from What's Going On with "...for only love can conquer hate." However, there are times, as ANC-backer Vusi Mahlasela pointed out, where "armed struggle is an act of love."
Sometimes love needs to pin an intruder to the floor or even pack a rocket launcher or AK-47.

War isn't the answer, but force can be part of the process of reaching an answer. Any violence needs to be done for the right reasons and at the right levels; I would have been within my rights to knock the stuffing out of the poor stoner who threatened me back in February, but I quickly realized that it wouldn't do any good.

Most likely, our peace-loving driver was thinking about Iraq. If our present can help get the Sadrites and the Sunni hard cases to behave, then we're doing our job; the powers that be have been leery of coming down to brass tacks with Sadr until recently, leaving things a war of attrition that hasn't helped anyone.

However, things are heading in a more civilized direction, as the Sadrites are on the ropes; force may well have been the answer in the long run, but it took them way too long to use it decisively.

Columbia and the Big Picture

There's some interesting politics revolving around Columbia, something you probably wouldn't have predicted even a week ago. We have a free trade deal with them that the president has put in the legislative hopper, setting off a 90-business-day window for Congress to act on the treaty in a fast-track, up-or-down manner.

Congressional democratic leaders could stall that by meeting for less than 90 days between now and the election, but that would mean recesses, which means recess appointments for the president.

The other Columbian related story is the reduced role for pollster-campaign strategist Mark Penn for the Clinton campaign; he had been her chief strategist but is stepping aside and merely working as a polling consultant the rest of the way. Penn's day job is as a PR firm executive; his firm had the Columbian government as a client. Penn was working on strategies to get the trade deal through Congress.

That wouldn't be a problem if the Clintons of the mid-90s had been his client. Back then, Bill was a free-trader, getting NAFTA and the WTO through Congress, strong-arming moderate Democrats to go along with the deals. Those were some of the high points of the Clinton years; that coupled with a economic team that had some monetary policy prudence mitigated the sting of his tax increases, allowing for a more vibrant economy that's gone major-recession free up to this day.

However, the intervening decade and a half has seen the Democrats lurch left on trade; even if Columbia is a key ally and fighting off the FARC narco-Marxists who are controlling a good chunk of the country's south, a free trade deal is a free trade deal and free trade is bad for the left. Also, benign Columbian leftists have been targets of counter-revolutionary goon squads/paramilitaries of the right, making the right-of-center Uribe government persona-non-grata on the activist left.

So, Hillary has to lean left, leaning away from where her husband was back in the day, to try and get more-protectionist-than-thou in blue-collar Pennsylvania. An extended primary has made Clinton lean left to pick up primary voters, moves that could cost her or Obama in the general election.

Obama reminds the Democratic faithful of a certain age of Bobby Kennedy. He may remind the non-liberal faithful of a certain age of George McGovern and get a similar spanking from McCain in the election this fall. Normally Democratic states like New Jersey and Pennsylvania are in play for McCain, making it very hard for Obama to see his way clear to an electoral win; that's even before the conservative 527s start bringing out Obama's leftist voting record to the extent that it's yet to be explored by the average voter.

That should mean that we'll see McCain in the White House come January and a loose continuation of current foreign policy. With Iraq improving and Europe becoming a bit less hostile towards the US, things are starting to look better overseas.

Columbia and South America remain the one area where the Anglosphere is on its heels. Hugo Chavez is poised to become the sugar daddy of leftists in Latin America; his moral support (at minimum) of the FARC makes supporting the Columbian government important. If Congress turns its back, the Columbian swing vote can be lured into the Bolivarian camp, making the drug trade that much harder to control at the source, since anything that weakens the US is good news for "Caesar" Chavez.

That why the vote means more than just a free trade deal; it's a vote for bringing Columbia into the American economic sphere and away from the socialist Chavezian-Bolivarian sphere.  There are plenty of folks on the left that wouldn't mind the latter, but there are quite a few Blue Dogs that aren't. It will be interesting to see if Bush can win them over.

¿Sabe "Saber Rattling?"

In a page out of the Israeli playbook, the Columbians killed FARC's "foreign minister," Raul Reyes, in an outpost just inside the Ecuadorian border. Of course, Ecuador didn't appreciate the presence of foreign troops on its soil even if it was just a mile over the border.

The death of Reyes will hurt Farc diplomatically as he was the head of the International Front, the part of the guerrilla movement dedicated to developing foreign contacts and links with like-minded organisations.

During the failed peace process with former president Andres Pastrana which ran from 1998-2002, Reyes headed Farc's negotiating team, based in Los Pozos, a dusty hamlet in the 42,000 sq km safe haven that the government granted to the guerrillas as the venue for talks.

In case you think FARC is Drudge on acid, they're a leftist Columbian rebel group that has effective control of a lot of southern Columbia. Their drug of choice is cocaine and they make a lot of it; using the sales to finance their movement.

The current Columbia president is a pro-US conservative, Alvaro Uribe, who lost his dad to FARC years ago. He got elected and reelected on a tough anti-FARC line.

Columbia is bordered by a couple of hard-left governments in Ecuador and Venezuela, both of who have friendly relations with FARC. Venezuelan strong-man Hugo Chavez has been friendly with FARC, playing a south-of-the-border Jesse Jackson in arranging releases of some FARC captives. Meanwhile, the Ecuadorians kicked out the Columbian ambassador over the border incursion and Chavez is publicly calling for his troops to beef up his border with Columbia.

Would Chavez be dumb enough to pick a fight with Columbia and the US over FARC? He's been struggling in public opinion at home and might want to do some saber rattling with the Yanquis. In answer to the title question, yes he does know saber-rattling all too well.

However, Chavez has to be careful. If he gives FARC outposts inside Columbia any material support or resists any efforts from Columbia to clean up the Venezuelan side of the border, we could have a US-Venezuelan shooting war, which may well disrupt the flow of oil from Venezuela. $4/gallon gas might be feasible if that goes down.

World War I got started over the assassination of the Austrian heir apparent. Could the FARC War start over the assassination of the FARC foreign minister? Stranger things have happened. Pray that it doesn't go that route.

 

Hardball Politics, Subcontinental Style

The news of the morning is of the assasination of leading Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto; someone shot the former prime minister, then blew himself up, taking at least 15 people with him.

The next question is who was behind the murder, if it wasn't a lone wacko.

The first easy finger goes at President Musharraf's crew. However, if he wanted to stop Bhutto, he could have just kept her under hard house arrest, citing past corruption charges. If the murder can be traced back to the government, support for the regime from abroad will dwindle to next to nothing and a US-led incursion to root out Taliban/al Qaeda sympathizers in the wild, wild northwest of Pakistan would be quickly forthcoming, as respecting a rogue regime's territory would be low on the west's list of priorities.

The second finger goes at radical elements wanting a less secular government. Killing off the most likely democratically-viable politician in the country will push back any meaningful democratic leanings for at least five years. The native jihadis would want a one-on-one fight with a corrupt authoritarian government rather than having to go up against a functioning democracy, and killing off Bhutto makes such a functioning democracy less likely in the near term.

The murder will have Musharraf lean towards the martial-law style of rule, making it harder for a functioning democracy to function. The passing of the opposition leader will make it hard for a viable opposition to develop; Nawaz Sharif is the other main opposition member, but he doesn't seem to be the guy to win the hearts of the average Pakistani.

It could be Musharraf, or rogue elements within the government (the ISI spy folks are easy to finger) who like the status quo and didn't want to answer to a civilian-ran government. It could also be the jihadis who would gain from the chaos.

It will take a while to find out.
 

Neo-Neocon

I just went over the five-screen Huckabee Foreign Affairs piece. If you get past the first paragraphs, he's largely in the camp of the hawks in the Bush administration; he differs in that they should have been more forceful in most cases.

Dubya's about 60% West Texas "cowboy" and 40% New England aristocrat which often creates the worst of both worlds. When he tries to play to his parent's upbringing, with the Dana-Carvey-playing-Dad "Not gonna do it, wouldn't be prudent" cautious side coming to the fore, he doesn't get credit for it because of the cowboy persona. Then, when he lets his inner Texan out, it scares the [insert bodily function product] out of the Europeans; "Some people say that I have a swagger. In Texas, we call it 'walking.'"

Arkansas has a bit of that no-nonsense streak but not quite the swagger. Huckabee's natural state seems to be to de-ruffle feathers where possible, which is an effective evangelistic tool; it's hard to present the Gospel to folks who are mad at you. It's also hard to persuade someone to come on your side of a diplomatic issue if your style turns them off.

Here's the second paragraph, the one with the word-bite in it-

American foreign policy needs to change its tone and attitude, open up, and reach out. The Bush administration's arrogant bunker mentality has been counterproductive at home and abroad. My administration will recognize that the United States' main fight today does not pit us against the world but pits the world against the terrorists. At the same time, my administration will never surrender any of our sovereignty, which is why I was the first presidential candidate to oppose ratification of the Law of the Sea Treaty, which would endanger both our national security and our economic interests.

There's two fights going on at once, a fight between militant Islam and the west and a fight between a more market-socialist, centralized EU vision of the world and a more welfare-capitalism and decentralized US-led vision of the world. Huckabee puts himself in the latter camp in the second fight, sounding a touch Buchananesque with the "never surrender any of our sovereignty" line.

Once you get that first paragraph out of the way, he presents a hawkish foreign policy that wants to do Iraq right, to beef up the active-duty armed forces so that we don't rely on the reserves and the National Guard as much, to contain Iran and bring pro-Iranian European powers on side, and to go after al Qaeda in Pakistan even if Musharraf doesn't like it.

This closing paragraph is worth noting-

"The process will not be quick," Ambassador Crocker told Congress of the progress in Iraq last fall. "It will be uneven, punctuated by setbacks as well as achievements, and it will require substantial U.S. resolve and commitment." Does this sound familiar? To me, the statement could also have applied to the American Revolution, the American Civil War, World War I, or World War II. We paid a heavy price in each of those conflicts, but we prevailed. And we will prevail now. Our history, from the snows of Valley Forge to the flames of 9/11, has been one of perseverance. I understand the threats we face today. When I am president, America will look this evil in the eye, confront it, defeat it, and emerge stronger than ever. It is easy to be a peace lover; the challenging part is being a peacemaker.

I recall a post I did in 2002 called "Peacemakers or Peacewishers" where I took some of the more pacifist elements to task-

I found myself reflecting on the word. Peacemaker. How often do the "peace activists" actually achieve peace? Not often, since the bad guys of the world aren't going to play nice, as the peaceniks want. These people are peacewishers, not peacemakers. They want peace to happen but aren't ready to do the things that would bring about peace.

In a domestic drama, the peacewisher stands back shouting "You two stop that!" while the peacemaker steps between the fighters and says "OK! Break it up!" The peacemaker may even have to cold-cock the most belligerent of the parties before order is restored.

Translated to world affairs, a peacemaker may have to get physically involved, get dirty and crack some heads if needed in order to separate a pair of warring factions. Peacemaking is an active verb.

This will be opposed from both ends of the spectrum. Some liberals won't want us to take sides (moral relativism) and are afraid of using force to settle anything. Some conservatives will oppose getting involved if there's no "Compelling National Interest" involved. But if we are to run the country in a godly manner, shouldn't we use our military for good where feasible?

I like Huck's use of peace lover to replace my peacewisher. The neocons took a standing eight count this last year, but it looks like they might just be willing to get back in the fight with new management.

Another Groningen Protocol

Here's an interesting story about a Dutch woman, Tanja Nijmeijer,  who's diary was found by the Columbian government; she'd been helping the FARC guerrillas in Columbia. The diaries noted that the FARC leaders were rather materialistic, not living up to their Marxist rhetoric, leaving Nijmeijer disillusioned.

Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos, meanwhile, was happy to use the case to counter "guerrilla chic" in Europe, where the FARC -- classified a terrorist group by both the United States and the European Union -- has a small but determined group of supporters who run pro-rebel Web sites.

That guerrilla chic has a long-running appeal among youth of the left in both the US and Europe, even before Che. Lefties of the Greatest Generation flocked to Spain to back the socialist-leaning Republicans against Franco's right-wing Nationalists; there was a large enough American left bloc helping that they formed their own Abraham Lincoln Brigade.

Two ladies of the left of the recent past have echoes of Nijmeijer. During the blog era, Palestinian sympathizer Rachel Corrie died blocking a Israeli bulldozer; back in the mid 90s, Lori Berenson was convicted of helping the  Túpac Amaru Marxist rebels in Peru (that's a different, Cuban-leaning group than the Maoist-inspired Shining Path) and is still imprisoned, despite an international cause celeb to get her released.

This significance of this passage of the Nijmeijer story may have not been noted by most readers-

Nijmeijer wrote her thesis on the FARC at the University of Groningen in her homeland, then traveled to Colombia in 2000 on a work-exchange program.

Peanut Gallery veterans might have caught it. Does the Groningen Protocol ring a bell?

Eduard Verhagen is clinical director of pediatrics at the University of Groningen. He is mainly known for his involvement in infant euthanasia in the Netherlands.

Euthanasia, while legal for adults, is illegal for children under the age of 12 in the Netherlands. Verhagen, who studied law and medicine, worked out a protocol with prosecutors and doctors in 2002 for infant euthanasia cases. This Groningen protocol requires that parents, doctors and social workers agree that further treatment is futile. After a waiting period of several days, during which the parents can think over the decision and say goodbye, the child is killed, for example with a drip of morphine and midazolam. The documentation of the case is subsequently turned over to the prosecutor's office. If this protocol is followed, prosecutors will refrain from pressing charges.

That's spelled Youthanasia. Three years ago almost to the day (early December), Hugh Hewitt was on the Groningen protocol like white on rice (his blog archives seem to be fubared), "ranting (in a good way) about the lack of media coverage"; others like yours truly and  Joe Carter were chiming in as well.

It's interesting that the school that produced one of the more brazen forms of medical utilitarianism also produced a leftist rebel in the news.

This is your brain. This is your brain placed in a secular leftist hotbed. Any questions?

 

Moderate Torture

It's not often that I'm going to side with Jimmy Carter in a fight with the Bush crew, but I'm going to be in Jimmah's corner on this one.

The United States tortures prisoners in violation of international law, former President Carter said Wednesday.

"I don't think it. I know it," Carter told CNN's Wolf Blitzer.

I'm not sure if I agree with all of Carter's rant, but the Bush team seems to think the moderate nastiness that they do to prisoners is something short of torture and the not-so-moderate nastiness that other countries do is torture. It reminds me of the Israelis, who use "moderate physical pressure" on Palestinian prisoners.

Here's the US equivalent of the Israeli "moderate physical pressure"-

Carter's comments come on the heels of an October 4 article in The New York Times disclosing the existence of secret Justice Department memorandums supporting the use of "harsh interrogation techniques." These include "head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures," according to the Times.

The White House last week confirmed the existence of the documents but would not make them public.

"Simulated drowning"; I think that's the "waterboarding" tactic that has come into our vocabulary post-9/11.

That looks like low-level torture to me. It's not peeling off fingernails or setting fire to one's crotch, but it's still torture. It might be a good way to get information, the quality of which is oft called into question (since the victim can tell what the questioner wants to hear to get the pain to stop, even if it isn't true), but it's not something that a freedom-loving country wants to be doing as a matter of policy.

Yes, you're going to have the occasional bad cop who tells Miranda to go do an unnatural act, slams the perp against the wall, and gets him to talk, or the CIA guy who does a few notches worse, knowing that Warren Court niceties don't fully follow overseas. In such cases, we use the information and punish the bad cops, even if the information was helpful.

However, we can't make such stuff the norm, or worse, make it policy.

If it looks more like something a dictatorship would do to its foes than something that the Supreme Court would sign off on, it's probably torture. This isn't good for the US, even if it gets information from the jihadis. We may win a few battles but lose international goodwill and the moral high ground.

Realistic Optomism

I'm an optimist in my politics, a progressive in the sense that we can make things better, both here and in the rest of the world. John 10 (NIV) comes to mind-

⁹I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. He will come in and go out, and find pasture. ¹⁰The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

Better yet, the King James' translation of that, which ends with "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly."

To that end, the pessimistic tone of Joe Carter's from earlier this week is rather depressing. There are a couple of points that I have a hard time accepting, even though I will agree with quite a bit of his assessment of Iraq. This is the one that I can't swallow

3. I no longer believe that Arab nations are capable of sustaining liberal democracies. The empirical evidence for this belief is overwhelming: Arab culture is currently unable to sustain democratic forms of government. Some people will decry this belief as racist or xenophobic. But it is simply being realistic.

Yes, that borders on racism, that there is something in the Arab genome that is inherently anti-democratic. It is modern Arab culture that is anti-democratic, and that can change in time.

I'm not as pessimistic about the Arab's ability to have a democracy. For instance, left to its own devices, Lebanon seems like it could develop a democracy. Egypt might be a generation or two away from a functioning democracy, and some of the Gulf states may well morph into constitutional monarchies in the next few decades.

Another thing that I question is the premise of his fifth lost belief-"I no longer believe we have the will to win against global jihadism." I don't think that war can ever be fully won short of the Lord's return. Here's my take from 2004

(1) To really win the "war on terror" in the sense that we are free from terrorist attacks from militant Islamics we need to wipe out militant Islam.

(2) To wipe out militant Islam, we need to wipe out Islam, since the basic teachings of the Koran will tend to lead some purists towards an anti-infidel jihad.

...

(3) Since our small-l liberal system won't stomach the idea of eradicating a religion, we'll need to figure out to minimize the number of jihadis rather than set out on some sort of scorched-earth ethnic cleansing.

We're not up to wiping a religion off the map, but we might be up to keeping the jihadist factions down to a minimum.

Some of the hegemonic shortcomings of that "small-l liberal system" show up in some of Carter's other misgivings, that our squeamish reaction to wars, especially long-term wars that didn't stem from an attack on the US, keeps us from being effective hegemons. That's not a bad thing in general; pity the world where we're comfortable throwing our weight around.

I can't be a paleocon; it's too toxic to my soul to have that piss-poor of an attitude about the prospects of civilization.

There can be progress, if we work at it. Sometimes, it doesn't work; Iraq seems to have too many vying factions to be a coherent democracy in its present form. Brownback's tripartite solution might be the last-best option.

Sometimes you get the bear, and sometimes the bear get you. That doesn't mean we stop hunting. We may think twice (and three times) about getting involved militarily again if we don't have a clear and pressing interest in doing so, but Iraq shouldn't squelch that do-gooder spirit in folks.

¿Guerra Fria?

A lot of diplomats and national security types are going to spend a lot of time looking at ALBA, and they won't be watching the Fantastic Four movies. That's the Chavez-centric burgeoning leftist trade grouping, which he now wants to include a defense pact.

ALBA is the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, or Alternativa Bolivariana para las Américas en Español. 19th Century revolutionary Simon Bolivar is Chavez's poster boy; Bolivar was a key fighter for independence from Spain for a number of Latin American countries.

Could the "defensive" nature of this pact, which would likely include Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia, turn offensive as they reach across their borders to attack foes of the "Bolivarian revolution" in neighboring countries.

We could well be seeing a Latin American Cold War, as some proxy wars could break out, pitting non-leftists and Chavez's Bolivarians around Latin America. Hopefully, saner heads will prevail before invasions start taking place, but this is starting to look a bit more than just some hot-headed jefe running his mouth.

Teddy Bear

As Artie Johnson's German soldier used to say on Laugh-In-"Verrrry interesting... but stooopid!" After giving us some serious saber rattling about a US missile-defense system in Poland and threatening a ICBM buildup, "Pooty-poot" changed his tone and offered to help set up a joint system in Azerbaijan. So much for the fangs of the Russian Bear.

Quick question-have the Azerbaijanis been told they're supposed to host this thing, or did they learn of this via CNN?

This brings back memories of the Gipper two decades ago, where he announced his SDI goals and offered to bring the Soviets into the system once it was designed. Fast forward from the 80s to today, and we may be seeing his dream realized.

The Blair Switch Project

Now that his critics have Paul Wolfowitz's head on a platter, the buzz turns to his successor. Traditionally, the World Bank presidency is a US job while the IMF chief is an European. That might just change, as the rumor mill has Tony Blair being posited for the job.

Blair's critics have tended to call him overly American; having him get what's traditionally an American post would be rather fitting. He's a tad to the right by European standards and is in general sympathy with the Bush administration on the big picture issues, while being a bit more green and pro-big-government than US Republicans would be comfortable with.

Blair would split the difference between Wolfowitz's free-market idealism and the continental socialists. He's declared himself a lame duck as PM, as the Labour party is slated to name a replacement (likely Gordon Brown) late next month; being World Bank president would beat being a back-bench MP.

Crazy enough to work.

Paris of the Middle East?

We're somewhat used to seeing footage of aggrieved French special interests barricading Paris to get their way; we're seeing Hezbollah and their pro-Syrian allies pulling a page from their old colonial masters and roadblocking much of Lebanon with burning cars and burning tires.

In France, such protest are generally over a particular set of policies, like farm subsidies, and the government often backs off of the proposed change to get the special interest off the streets. Here, the Hezzies are protesting the government in general, looking to force a government change.

Were this a normal democracy, calling out the National Guard or the local equivalent to get the rioters/protesters off the streets would be enough. However, Hezbollah has its own army and could require a full-fledged civil war to get them off the streets.

Israel didn't finish the job they started last year, and Lebanon is now paying the price. If this spins out of control, which seems likely, the international community can take a good chunk of the blame by empowering Hezbollah.

Winter of Discontent

I haven't been blogging much for the last few days save my Edifiers. I haven't been in the best of moods; winter has finally arrived in Michigan, job hunting is tiring and unrewarding, and the news is full of things that bring more snark and woe.

• They've cut to the chase in Venezuela, and given Chavez dictatorial powers for 18 months. He's not a current military threat, but he's got oil money and an interest in turning Venezuela into another Cuba and setting up a leftist anti-US network of countries.
• The Chinese successfully tested a satellite-rammer. The Chinese are a current military threat, even though our large trade relationship makes a hot war unlikely at present. Still, such tech makes one step back and take notice if the cold-but-civil relations between the US and China deteriorate. It would only take a Taiwan gambit and a US president willing to go to the mat for Taiwan for such bad boys to come into play.
• Everyone wants to get into the nuclear act, including Jordan. With Israel packing nukes for decades, Iran close to it and Gulf Arab states looking to get their own program, we've got a full-fledged arms race in the Middle East. Jordan's generally benign, but if some hot-heads managed to kick aside King Abdullah, it might not stay that way.
• Pelosi wants a global warming committee. It's an end run around John Dingell's Energy and Commerce committee; Dingell's from downriver metro Detroit, and goes to bat for the car industry on CAFE standards.
• Bob Ney got sent up the river for 30 months for his Casinogate efforts. Goodbye and good riddance.

There isn't a whole lot positive to talk about right now, other than that the Pistons seem to be getting themselves together and we have one of the more compelling pair of NFL conference championship games in a while. I'll go out on a limb and predict a New Orleans-Indy Super Bowl.

A job offer from any number of places I've talked to would improve the mood; Friday dinnertime is depressing when you're unemployed, since you can't do much until Monday to improve your lot.

Ends of the World

Two interesting news items today; the "Doomsday Clock" getting moved up two minutes as they added climate change to their apocalyptic mix, and 24's nuking of LA.

My first response to the clock change was that the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists decided to get with the 21st century liberal program. However, they may well be right in that climate change may be as dangerous as nuclear proliferation.

Back when that clock was a Cold War staple, we were a couple of miscalculations away from an all-out WWIII with hundreds of nukes primed to take out much of the northern hemisphere. Today, we're unlikely to see two major nuclear powers go at it. Relations between the US and Russia, although chilly, aren't near a point of trading ICBMs, and the US and China are unlikely to get to a nuclear standoff, although Taiwan might prove the trigger for a nuclear exchange.

What's more likely is that regional powers could use nuclear weapons in a conflict, or that terrorists could get hold of briefcase nukes, like the one projected in this season's 24. There would be a lot of fallout from such a limited attack, but civilization would go on. Dresden got worse treatment in WWII from conventional bombing than Jack Bauer's LA did with a mininuke.

If the environmental pessimists are correct, climate change might be more disruptive than the occasional nuke. Katrina cleared out half of New Orleans; an ocean rise of a foot or two could make low-lying places like Louisiana, the Netherlands and Bangladesh under water in many currently dry places. In addition, if we start seeing an increase in freaky weather like the California freeze, we could see an increase in inflation as agriculture adapts to changes.

Lots of coulds there. Quite a few folks are skeptical about whether such forecasts are outliers, and even those who accept that change is likely will debate what, if anything, to do about it. For some areas, like the northern US, warmer weather will mean lower heating costs and longer growing seasons; such changes aren't bad. However, other areas will see changes in climate that may make current crops obsolete by having too much warmth or the wrong amount of rain.

Climate change might kill folks by floods or famine, but many of those problems are treatable; we can get food into famine areas if there isn't a war going on and we can get people out of flooding areas. On the other hand, there isn't much you can do about a suitcase nuke once it goes off.

That makes nukes the bigger problem; they kill people wholesale and there's little downside to limiting their wide availability. We can work around a lot of climate change issues, but there's little that can be done to recover from a nuclear attack.

However, for most of us, Matthew West's advice is good-

It's not the end
The end of the world
It's just another day depending on grace
It's not the end
The end of the world
It's just another day, don't sleep it all away

We can make a case for clamping down on jihadis and thoughtfully scaling back CO₂ emissions, but unless you happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time with a jihadi, it is just another day.

There isn't much you can do either way. Live out God's love for your fellow man and let the pros sweat the security details.

ICE, ICE, Baby

An interesting move by our immigration folks, who ran a crackdown on Bosnian Serb immigrants who fibbed on their asylum papers.

The defendants failed to disclose their previous service in the Bosnian Serb military on immigration applications, it is alleged. This enabled them to enter and live in the US after winning refugee status. One became a US citizen.

In an era where we're asking the Immigration and Customs Enforcement folks (I just caught that the INS had been put on ICE) to crack down on would be jihadis and on Hispanic immigrants from the south, and when Islamic folks are starting to cry about getting charged with Flying While Muslim, we get the ICE cracking down on some European folks of Christian ethnicity.

Is the newsworthiness of this merely a way to show that the ICE will work on Europeans as well those of different faiths and skin-tones? The Bosnian Serbs are an easy target, as their militias did a number of atrocities against Muslims and Croatians. There's also nominally Christian (a clannish Orthodoxy that didn't inform their actions much), which makes them PC to go after.

Since all the Nazis of WWII vintage are generally dead or in nursing homes, we need a new European group to pick on in future action movies, where we need bad guys who aren't "of color" so as to avoid getting the thought police on the producer's case. Are the Serbs the new Nazis?

No, the Russians are, but Serbia's easier to pick on. You pick on the Russians, you might wind up with a case of polonium poisioning.

 

Reflections of a UN Lifer

Kofi's heading out the door, and left a little Independence stinkbomb on his way out. There's a lot to ponder here that's best done in something other than in reflexive UN-bashing mode.

The UN way is consensus, getting most everyone to agree to things. That's the environment that Annan has spent his adult life in; he's spent his entire career at the UN. However, there are plenty of issues that we're not going to get consensus on.

Mr Annan also stressed that Washington's current position in the world gives it "a priceless opportunity" to entrench the principles of democracy at a global level.

But he stressed that this was no clash between Western and Eastern civilisations.

"All civilisation is at stake, and we can save it only if all peoples join together in the task."

That's one of the problems with the UN style; all people's aren't interested in helping. Or at least all government's aren't interested. Some are opposed to a broad UNism that appreciates human rights and democracy. Others aren't hostile to those aims, but have other agendas that they want to push along side UNism that come in conflict with Anglospherian visions of the world.

The UN is a "marketplace" of ideas and hegemonies clashing and cooperating in various degrees. Sometimes, there is cooperation if no one's ox is getting gored and getting together has little downside to the major players. However, that seems to be the exception to the rule; getting all five veto-wielding members to agree on something is a rare event.

When such agreement is not feasible, non-UN options wind up occurring. They aren't typically "unilateral" but may not have all the major players in the UN on board.

The speech went down at the Truman presidential library, who is presented as "an early champion of the UN" in contrast to Dubya's independence. One of the UN's early successes on Truman's watch was having the US-led forces helping defend South Korea to be flying the UN banner.

That was largely due to the Russians having boycotted a Security Council meeting. With the China seat being held by Taiwan at the time, there was no Communist veto of aid to South Korea, and the US effort had an UN imprimatur. Had the Soviets been in town, Give 'em Hell Harry may well have been just as independent as Dubya.